Eating Healthy for Vegetarians (Video)

Eating healthy for vegetarians involves grains, beans, lentils and more. Eat healthy for vegetarians with help from an expert in nutrition and health in this free video clip.

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Hi. My name is Stella Metsovas and I make a career out of studying, cooking and eating food. Today, we're going to talk about healthy ways to be a vegetarian.. Now, when I was vegetarian through college, I did it all the wrong ways. I was consuming a lot of processed soy products like tofu dogs, tofu jerky, name it, all processed junk. So, when you're a vegetarian, you want to make sure that all the food you consume are similar to, like, a Mediterranean diet. And that's going to include a lot of whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts and seeds, these are raw walnuts, superior source of protein and omega fats, which are really important. So what happens in the vegetarian diet, if you have too much plant, which is the base of a vegetarian diet, you're going to have a lot of omega-6 fatty acids in your diet. You want to make sure that you have a balance of omega-3s and nuts and seeds are going to provide that. So, make sure you include a healthy dose of nuts and seeds. If you're doing protein drinks, smoothies, make sure you get a quality source of a protein powder. My favorite is brown rice; it's hypoallergenic, really good for you, love to add it with a little bit of berries, some almond milk or coconut milk and just blend that. Spirulina is a concentrated source of protein and nutrients that are essential, like B-12, to a vegetarian's diet. If you're not consuming animal products, you need to be very mindful of where you're getting your B-12. So you might want to either supplement and/or include foods like spirulina, which is actually, it's technically a food, to your diet. So, you also want to make sure that you include seaweed in your diet to be the healthiest vegetarian out there. Seaweed contains B-12 and B-12 is often lacking in a vegetarian diet. So, seaweed can be used as a topping to salads, to your beans and rice, to quinoa, You can also get nori sheets. Nori sheets are used to make sushi and you can use a nori sheet to make a vegetarian-style sushi, so just layer a little bit of rice, or you can use quinoa, with some cucumber spears and some lettuce leaves and just wrap it up, and that's a power sushi roll for the vegetarian. Quinoa is another one of my favorite sources of protein-based grains; actually, it's not a grain, a lot of people think it's a grain. It's part of a flower on a vegetable. So, quinoa is an up and coming source of protein for vegetarians. Beans, of course, are essential to any vegetarian diet. Combine this, the beans with the quinoa, some seaweed and you have a powerhouse of nutrients that often go lacking in a processed vegetarian diet. So, get away from the processed junk and include healthy, whole, Mediterranean-based ingredients to be the healthiest vegetarian out there. My name is Stella Metsovas, thank you all for joining me.